How to Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator

Mindy

Cartoon of a woman with black hair and red shirt is kneeling on the ground with her head in her hands

Recently I was reviewing the State of the Creator Economy report put together by the team at Convertkit, and one stat caught my eye.

In the report, it was revealed that 61% of all respondents experienced burnout in the previous 12 months. And 1 in 10 of those respondents said they felt burnt out the entire year.

I knew that burnout was a big problem in our industry (I talk about it A LOT), but I didn’t realize it was that bad!

Breaking it down a little more, the participants said the two biggest causes of burnout were the pressure to post content everywhere, and content fatigue.

Based on this, I have two simple suggestions that will reduce your chances of suffering from severe burnout:

  1. Pick one or two platforms and stick with them. You don’t need to be everywhere; in fact I would argue it’s impossible to effectively show up on every platform unless you have a team of employees to help. Pick the platform where your audience is spending the most time and put your efforts there.
  2. Create a posting schedule that works for your lifestyle. The pressure to post every day, or even multiple times a day, is what leads to content fatigue. You don’t need to post every day. If you have a day job or kids to take care of, you already know your time is limited. Reduce your schedule to 3 or 4 posts per week and try to batch create your content whenever you have time.

Some additional burnout-busting ideas from the Convertkit survey: Getting outside, moving your body, journaling, and taking dedicated breaks.

And if you want to learn more about the psychology of burnout, I highly recommend listening to this episode of Creator Science where Jay Clouse interviews Dr. K of Health Gamer.

Whatever works for you, be sure to make a plan for future burnout episodes before they happen, so you’ll be ready!

About the author

Mindy is the owner of Fairy Tale Social and has over 10 years of content creation and blogging experience.

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